ABSTRACT
The integration of human rights into all phases of the disaster management cycle has been repeatedly called for in several international forums. The author tries to explain how human rights standards and principles can be incorporated into disaster management to increase the enjoyment of rights by victims of such disasters by surveying different sets of documents – recommendations of UN human rights treaty and Charter-based mechanisms, UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee and UN Development Group policy documents, deliberations of inter-governmental bodies and policy-making organs – and highlighting three different ways in which human rights are being integrated into disaster management to strengthen prevention, response and recovery efforts: the normative, operational and methodological approaches. The analysis is circumscribed to the UN practice in this regard. She concludes that there is a movement seen in UN treaty bodies, special procedures and policy-making organs such as the Human Rights Council, towards a gradual affirmation and recognition of the fact that a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to disaster management is a result of international obligations. This is also sustained by the steady introduction of an HRBA to disaster management as a programming tool in national regulatory frameworks and in national and international policies for humanitarian aid and assistance.
